Tattle Tale Lights

Motorists who run red lights in order to save themselves on average less than two minutes pose a hazard to other drivers nationwide, including Daly City. 

The Daly City Police Department in conjunction with the Daly City Street Division have installed "tattle-tale" lights at various intersections throughout the City.  These tattle-tale lights along with our red light enforcement cameras are designed to reduce the number of collision related injuries and deaths from motorists who fail to stop at a red light.

What is tattle-tale light?  For starters, take a look at the picture to the left.  This is a picture of a tattle-tale light mounted and in use.  The fixture is a small box containing a blue LED light that is only illuminated when a traffic signal turns to red.  They are not illuminated during any other light sequence. 

As the name indicates, the tattle-tale light is designed to "tell" on you to an observing officer if you run a red light.  An officer will typically be positioned across from red light they are observing, giving themselves full view of the limit line and tattle-tale light.  The officer will watch for the tattle-tale light to turn blue, indicating the direction of traffic they are observing now has a solid red light, then observe the limit line.  Any motorist who crosses over the limit line after the light has turned red has committed a violation of CVC 21453(a), failure to stop for a solid red circular light and can be issued a moving violation citation. 

The Daly City Police Department is continually adding additional tattle-tale lights at intersections which continually produce a high amount of traffic collision from motorists who fail to stop at a red light. Below is a map with the current intersections which have tattle-tale lights installed.

Below are intersections that are currently outfitted with tattle-tale lights: